8 ms·

I used to think this, but I've come around somewhat. The economy as a basic premise is expected to grow at least 3% a year or bad stuff starts happening. Obviou

I used to think this, but I've come around somewhat. The economy as a basic premise is expected to grow at least 3% a year or bad stuff starts happening. Obviously no kind of exponential growth is sustainable, even at a low rate. The best minds are getting sucked into this at least partly because the work is necessary to keep the economic wheels spinning. If we give up on having an average % of yearly growth, we're committing to living in an economy that's a zero or negative sum game. So yes, we are stagnating scientifically, but it's not necessarily for no reason. The longer we keep running the economy as is, the more smart people are going to have to be allocated to figuring out how to keep up with the exponential growth our system demands. Unfortunately, no one seems to have cracked steady-state economics, so it looks like we'll be doing this for the foreseeable future... Additionally, I don't know how we're supposed to keep up with this absurd need for exponential growth without leaning hard on technology (at least if we presume we don't want to wreck the planet more.) I feel like big tech is actually doing something important with regard to growing the economy disproportionately with the physical resources they consume.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> The economy as a basic premise is expected to grow at least 3% a year or bad stuff starts happening. That isn't really a thing. The 3% growth aligns closely with population growth (including immigration), and that's where it really comes from. If the average company makes widgets and the population grows by 3% then they hire 3% more people and sell 3% more widgets to 3% more customers, and the company is worth 3% more. The unsustainable thing is really unlimited population growth, but steady state populations don't require some kind of cataclysm. They work a little differently, in particular people have to on average work longer before they retire because there are fewer working people to support them in retirement, but it's hardly mass starvation and nuclear war. And even the drawbacks are offset by things like automation -- not as good as both automation and population growth, but still probably not worse than your grandfather had it. The real problem is that there is no iron law that says people have to spend their working hours on pie-growing activities like automation and honest medical research instead of pie-stealing activities like adtech and patent trolling, so if we have rules and institutions that make the latter more profitable, that's what we get.
- dane-pgp 7y ago
  Is it really unthinkable that a fixed population could each year turn a finite set of resources into a set of resources that is 3% more valuable? If a tree falls in a forest, and someone turns it into some chairs, while planting at least one tree in its place, then that has made the economy more valuable (assuming there are people who want the chairs, and that leaving the fallen tree in place would be less valuable than having newly planted ones). Zero percent growth means that every time someone creates something valuable out of less valuable materials, there has to be an equivalent amount of value destroyed somewhere. I suppose that entropy takes care of the destruction, to some extent, but it seems arbitrary to try to limit value creation to precisely match that level.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > Is it really unthinkable that a fixed population could each year turn a finite set of resources into a set of resources that is 3% more valuable? No, of course not. The bulk of that 3% has always been population growth, but economic growth outside of population growth is possible -- it's even beneficial -- it's just not mandatory. There is nothing forcing it to happen, and the bad thing that happens if you don't have it is that you don't have it. But that's still not great. Humans have had periods of stagnation that have lasted hundreds of years, and nobody really wants to live the lifestyle of the middle ages anymore. Which is the point. If people spend their time optimizing click through rates and suing each other then humans don't immediately go extinct, but we also don't get any further toward curing cancer or colonizing other planets. And that's bad, directly, on its own, not because of some nebulous impact on economic indicators.
    - mrep 7y ago
      US real gdp growth per capita has been 1.33% for 2010-2016 [0] which is not an insignificant part of 3%. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(real)_per_capita_growth_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(real...
      - 7y ago

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> The economy as a basic premise is expected to grow at least 3% a year or bad stuff starts happening. That isn't really a thing. The 3% growth aligns closely with population growth (including immigration), and that's where it really comes from. If the average company makes widgets and the population grows by 3% then they hire 3% more people and sell 3% more widgets to 3% more customers, and the company is worth 3% more. The unsustainable thing is really unlimited population growth, but steady state populations don't require some kind of cataclysm. They work a little differently, in particular people have to on average work longer before they retire because there are fewer working people to support them in retirement, but it's hardly mass starvation and nuclear war. And even the drawbacks are offset by things like automation -- not as good as both automation and population growth, but still probably not worse than your grandfather had it. The real problem is that there is no iron law that says people have to spend their working hours on pie-growing activities like automation and honest medical research instead of pie-stealing activities like adtech and patent trolling, so if we have rules and institutions that make the latter more profitable, that's what we get.

dane-pgp 7y ago
Is it really unthinkable that a fixed population could each year turn a finite set of resources into a set of resources that is 3% more valuable? If a tree falls in a forest, and someone turns it into some chairs, while planting at least one tree in its place, then that has made the economy more valuable (assuming there are people who want the chairs, and that leaving the fallen tree in place would be less valuable than having newly planted ones). Zero percent growth means that every time someone creates something valuable out of less valuable materials, there has to be an equivalent amount of value destroyed somewhere. I suppose that entropy takes care of the destruction, to some extent, but it seems arbitrary to try to limit value creation to precisely match that level.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > Is it really unthinkable that a fixed population could each year turn a finite set of resources into a set of resources that is 3% more valuable? No, of course not. The bulk of that 3% has always been population growth, but economic growth outside of population growth is possible -- it's even beneficial -- it's just not mandatory. There is nothing forcing it to happen, and the bad thing that happens if you don't have it is that you don't have it. But that's still not great. Humans have had periods of stagnation that have lasted hundreds of years, and nobody really wants to live the lifestyle of the middle ages anymore. Which is the point. If people spend their time optimizing click through rates and suing each other then humans don't immediately go extinct, but we also don't get any further toward curing cancer or colonizing other planets. And that's bad, directly, on its own, not because of some nebulous impact on economic indicators.
  - mrep 7y ago
    US real gdp growth per capita has been 1.33% for 2010-2016 [0] which is not an insignificant part of 3%. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(real)_per_capita_growth_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(real...
    - 7y ago